In­quest into death at clinic

A PRI­VATE hos­pi­tal has ac­knowl­edged that its care fell below its nor­mal stan­dards over the death of a Jewish pa­tient.

Neil Shestopal, a so­lic­i­tor, suf­fered a car­diac ar­rest be­lieved to have been caused by an air em­bolism af­ter the re­moval of a ca­theter by a nurse at the Lon­don Clinic in April 2016.

He was left with a se­vere brain in­jury, ac­cord­ing to a fam­ily friend, the le­gal jour­nal­ist Joshua Rozen­berg, and died in Novem­ber 2016 af­ter months “in a state of min­i­mal aware­ness”. He was 72.

His widow, Dawn Freed­man, a re­tired cir­cuit judge, was in his room at the Lon­don Clinic when the ca­theter was re­moved. The fam­ily claim the proper pro­ce­dure was not car­ried out.

Mr Shestopal, who was hon­orary can­tor at Eal­ing Sy­n­a­gogue, had un­der­gone can­cer surgery at the clinic.

An in­quest into his death will take place later this month.

A spokesper­son for the Lon­don Clinic said: “We con­ducted an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in April 2016 and shared the find­ings with Mrs Shestopal at the time. We have apol­o­gised un­re­servedly for what hap­pened; the care we pro­vided fell below the stan­dards we set our­selves.”